Giving Thanks

Happy Thanksgiving!  Mine is over (I’m 16 hours ahead), and you are probably just about to sit down for dinner.

I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on everything I’m thankful for, and I’m sure it would be tedious to outline.  But I do want to specifically state that I’m very grateful to have such supportive friends and family at home.  By reading my blog or sending me emails or catching me on g-chat, I feel very supported and loved.  So, thank you.

This has been a difficult voyage, but even though we’ve had some rough times, I’m extremely thankful to have had this opportunity and experience.  It doesn’t really seem fair.

I’ve certainly been aware of the many privileges I’ve had being born into the family that I was, growing up in the US, being able to get 2 degrees beyond high school. Etc.  But during this voyage, I’ve seen so many people with so much less, my privilege seems even more overwhelming.   

So I am filled with gratitude.

Thanksgiving on the ship was weird – it was a regular class and work day for everyone.  In the morning I said “Happy Thanksgiving” to a faculty member’s wife and she said “oh my gosh, I totally forgot.”  She wasn’t the only one!  It felt very surreal.

I can’t remember if I’ve explained the “extended family” program on the ship.  Basically, all interested faculty and staff are assigned a few interested students and the group functions as an extra support group.  I have 2 kids (I had 3 – one ran away) and Thanksgiving dinner was set up to let us all eat with our families.

My family was seated at 1800 and went through the buffet line right away.  We had all the traditional Thanksgiving food items – turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.  There were some random ship items in there too – macaroni (which I recognize many people eat at Thanksgiving), rice, and salmon.  I looked around the dining room, and everyone had dressed up a little and everybody seemed to be happy and full and making the most out of a bizarre holiday situation.

So we ate our meal and talked about our time in Japan, how crazy it is that our next stop is the US, and then we talked about what we are thankful for.

Not a Thanksgiving I’ll probably ever have again, but with everything considered, it was really nice.  After dinner, I went to a friend’s birthday party where we had cake and wine (the funniest thing about THAT is I had just taken my malaria pill which forbids dairy, alcohol, or tums within 2 hours of taking it – I had all 3 at the party).

A faculty member was hosting from his cabin, which, while bigger than mine, isn’t big enough for 30 people.  But we made it work.  He has a balcony and it was a wild night to be out on the balcony.   We all ended up with some salt water on our face (and we were on the 5th deck).

Anyway, a fun evening.  Too bad the campus store isn’t having any Black Friday sales today.